I initially experienced their terrible support infrastructure when the customer had to travel all the way to their service centers instead of booking an RMA from home.
I initially had an issue with my 2.5" drive which needed replacement with bad sectors creeping in. I gave the drive for replacement with a copy of purchase bill. It was accepted only to get returned after a week telling the drive is out of warranty!
After long email conversations, it was learned that Seagate do not have their own support infrastructure and rely on Singapore support teams which BLINDLY claim that the drive was purchased outside India and can not be supported (when it was CONFIRMED IN WRITTEN EMAIL that the drive was an authentic India purchase and only confusion was with warranty expiry date which was about a month ahead as per the serial number). After more than 2 months of repeated banging my head, I was given a 5400RPM drive in lieu of 4200RPM low power.
Latest being another Barracuda 7200RPM 320GB drive which was originally replaced by a refurbished one on December 2010 which never worked properly (intermittent freezing during operation). I took it back and got a commitment from the Vendor (Accel Frontline) that they will issue a BRAND NEW HDD this time. However, they again gave a refurbished one and worst was that I took their words dint bother checking the drive while I was busy with my travels and other official and personal commitments. After another 2 months, when I needed the drive to be used, I opened the anti static bag to notice worn out tracks on the PCB and realized its ANOTHER BADLY REFURBISHED DRIVE!
I had to travel YET AGAIN to their service center somehow managing to get some time off for the same REDUNDANT ACTIVITY of chasing them and ONCE AGAIN I was promised to do the needful. However, after almost 4 WEEKS of repeated FOLLOW-UPs I am told that the same drive is returned as "REPAIRED" when they kept promising to give a BRAND NEW drive.
Worse is, when such confirmation should be given within 7 days, I was never told till today that the drive was returned as "no issue was found". Again, WORST, no ESCALATION contacts are provided for Seagate and I have to end up dealing with their hopeless Singapore support team who are tough even to interact in PLAIN ENGLISH (their language on emails is so poor that sometimes you can not infer what they have written and what they intended). While the drive had proper India Warranty, I am sure if I have to work with their ONLY 1 LEVEL contact, they will cause further allegations telling the original drive was purchased outside India, etc.
I would appreciate if one of the mods here break this FIREWALL between the customer and top escalation contacts in Seagate India or Singapore to get out of such ABUSE of customer's patience without any fault of his.
I really feel like BANGING MY HEAD against the wall with such kind of support provided BOTH by the Vendor and later by Seagate AsiaPacific Head Office without any reprieve and escalation. I work for a large MNC who is one of the biggest Integrator of Seagate products, I still could not imagine Seagate providing such SHODDY support to end users a never faced issues with their enterprise support.
I understand that this forum is best used for technical discussion, however I could not find a better place to pass my grievance and sincerely hope that other customers get understanding of the level of support and frustration there after. I also hope Seagate top management take a note of this and work to resolve such LOWEST LEVEL of service gesture as demonstrated by their partners and AsiaPacific Support Team. They should atleast be willing to escalate the matter or share escalation contacts to resolve the issues.
